John Tsarpalas: Politics is a team sport. One of the most valuable assets to a campaign are good volunteers. Commonwealthy #15, Volunteers in a Political Campaign.
I am here with Kristina Keats and we are going to talk about volunteers: volunteers for campaigns, volunteers for organizations. How do you find volunteers? How do you motivate them? And how do you manage them? Because it is a big job, all three of those.
Kristina Keats: Right. And volunteers are absolute essential ingredient of any successful campaign or any successful endeavor that you are not using paid employees. So let’s talk about what motivates a volunteer to volunteer in the first place.
A volunteer is going to care about what’s going on in their community. A volunteer wants to feel that the time they spent was well spent, that it wasn’t wasted. A volunteer may want the comradery; they want to be a part of something.
So there’s lots of reasons why people volunteer. You have to keep those in mind when you ask volunteers to come and help you.
John Tsarpalas: Right.
Kristina Keats: Okay. You better remember how valuable they are. Lots of times I’ve seen people in volunteer organizations that are running it who take the attitude, “Well, it is free labor therefore it doesn’t cost me anything. I don’t have to worry about them being really efficient because it is free.”
Okay, that is the absolute opposite of reality. A volunteer hour is the most valuable thing in your campaign besides your own time as the candidate.
John Tsarpalas: Right.
Kristina Keats: Candidate time is the most valuable. You define what is valuable by how much of it is available; how scarce is it? Well, there is only one candidate. He or she only has so much time. So it is an extremely scare resource. Money is easier to get than more candidate time because you can never get more candidate time.
John Tsarpalas: Right.
Kristina Keats: A volunteer hour- I used to advise my clients, “You should not think of this as free time. You should think that this time costs you a hundred dollars an hour because that is really closer to how difficult it is to get and how little of it you get relative to how much you need.”
You essentially need unlimited volunteer time. You never have enough because there is always more that can be done in a campaign. Think about it; an ideal campaign will contact personally every voter in a given voting district.
John Tsarpalas: Right, and multiple contacts help. The more times they are contacted, the more likely they are to vote for you.
Kristina Keats: So until you’ve contacted every voter in your district at least far enough as to find out which way they are voting, you still have use for volunteer time.
John Tsarpalas: Right.
Kristina Keats: That makes it pretty unlimited. I did run one race one time where we called everybody. We talked to everybody who had a phone who lived in the district who would pick up the phone.
John Tsarpalas: Wow.
Kristina Keats: Once.
John Tsarpalas: But it is still huge.
Kristina Keats: It was two days before the election and we had reached the point where we were calling the same people eight times a day. So it was time to stop.
John Tsarpalas: Yeah.
Kristina Keats: And we actually knew that when someone picked up the phone and said, “I am a Democrat. Leave me alone.” and hung up.
John Tsarpalas: You got the message.
Kristina Keats: We got the message. And I said, “You know what? I think we are done.”
John Tsarpalas: Yeah. But then you are going to go into Get Out the Vote mode, but that’s a whole other thing. There’s plenty of phone calls to make.
Kristina Keats: There’s still work to do, but we were done with the ID side of the campaign.
John Tsarpalas: So why don’t we explain that a little bit. Well, we’ll save that. Let’s stick to volunteers.
Kristina Keats: So as a candidate, the best thing that you can do is think that every volunteer dollar costs you a hundred dollars, even though you are not paying for it. Because that gives you an idea of how valuable it is.
John Tsarpalas: Well, also volunteers can do something that paid people can’t. They can speak with passion. They can speak to people that are like them. The best volunteer is a volunteer calling someone the same as them.
Kristina Keats: Right.
John Tsarpalas: A thirty-five year old mother calling other thirty-five year old mothers is the perfect person to make that call.
Kristina Keats: Right.
John Tsarpalas: There’s only one better to make the call and that’s the candidate. But the candidate doesn’t have enough time.
Kristina Keats: Right. And even in some cases, it is better to have that thirty-five year old mom in the school call rather than the candidate.
John Tsarpalas: Right.
Kristina Keats: So our point is here think of your volunteers as precious because you don’t ever have enough of them. I’ve seen campaigns. And I am going to tell you what not to do first because then we will talk about what to do.
I know how to handle a volunteer because I got into this whole game strictly as a volunteer. I volunteered a ton before I became a candidate or before I became a campaign manager. So I knew what motivated them.
The worst thing you can do is a volunteer shows up and you are not ready for them. You don’t have anything for them to do.
John Tsarpalas: Don’t waste their time.
Kristina Keats: Because if you waste their time, they are not going to come back. And understand that. And I am talking don’t waste a minute of their time. When John and I were a team together, we were the perfect team because John’s a lover and I am like Ms. Organization General; get out the whip!
John Tsarpalas: I’d hug them and then Tina would put them to work. It worked very well.
Kristina Keats: It worked well because they got their hug. And John would say, “How are you?” And I am standing there with paperwork and a phone ready to train them and get them going so that the minute they are finished with their hug (“Okay, John, you’ve got twenty-two seconds.”)… But what it said to the volunteer is, “You are so valuable!”
John Tsarpalas: Right.
Kristina Keats: “We are so glad you are here. Thank goodness you are here.”
John Tsarpalas: I was truly thrilled to see every one of them that walked in the door.
Kristina Keats: Right. And I was thrilled to see them. They knew that. They knew that we just appreciated the fact that they walked in that door. And it wasn’t fake.
To say, “Oh, I am so happy you are here! Why don’t you sit down and we will find something for you to do?” does that send a message that you are really thrilled that they are there?
I mean, they knew that we depended on them, that we need them, that we loved them, that what they were doing was God’s work. “You are the person that is going to make this campaign win.”
John Tsarpalas: Right.
Kristina Keats: Okay?
John Tsarpalas: Now, let me slow you down a little. A couple things I learned is you can’t throw too much at them at once.
Kristina Keats: No.
John Tsarpalas: And you’ve got to find the right niche for certain people.
Kristina Keats: Exactly. And in terms of getting prepared for your volunteers, have work that an eight year old can do, because you might get one. It might be putting labels on something. It might be filing. It might be shredding. You should have a pile of work that is somewhat mindless and doesn’t require a very high skill set.
I actually had someone with Alzheimer’s who volunteered on a regular basis and I had a job for her. You should be able to think of a job at every level, okay?
John Tsarpalas: Right.
Kristina Keats: The most important job that volunteers can do is to talk to voters. Most people don’t like doing that. They just don’t like doing that.
So, you’ve recruited the volunteer. They’ve come in. They don’t know what they are going to do; this the first time they’ve ever volunteered for a campaign. They walk in the door. I would say, “Well, what would you like to do?”
Find out what they like to do. Because if you are giving them something they hate doing, they won’t come back. That’s why you have to have the different tasks ready. If there is someone who never wants to talk to somebody but they like to walk, then you give them a walk list and literature. They can just go hang it on doors. Yeah, it is not as good as if they knock on the door and talk to people, but it is better than nothing.
John Tsarpalas: Right. Let me throw in that coaching and teaching and hand-holding can get them over the fear of being on the phone or knocking on a door.
Kristina Keats: Right.
John Tsarpalas: I’ve often went out with people door to door or sat at the phone and let them listen to me. After fifteen or twenty minutes, they go, “Yeah, I can do this. This is fine.”
Kristina Keats: Right. When you’ve asked them what they want to do, let them tell you what their skill set is. You match it to a job you have. Often times they will say, “I don’t know. I’ll do whatever you need.” Hallelujah!
John Tsarpalas: Yeah.
Kristina Keats: When they say that, then you don’t say, “Okay, I am going to have you work on the phones.” No, you have to explain to them how valuable it is to begin with. You say, “The most important thing you can do is talk to voters. We are making phone calls right now. It is really easy. We are going to train you. But it is the most valuable thing that you can do because when you talk to a voter, you can persuade them to vote for Susie.”
John Tsarpalas: Let me interject here. We are also talking about organizations. So perhaps it is an issue call. You are talking about how there is going to be a bond referendum out there and it is going to raise taxes. They can be calling about that issue. It isn’t necessarily only voters.
Kristina Keats: Right.
John Tsarpalas: Or if it is an organization that needs volunteers, you can be calling for other volunteers. You can be calling to come to our event. “Come to our ice cream social next week in the park.” And it can be volunteering to raise money for your organization.
So we’ll take it from there. But I just wanted to interject that.
Kristina Keats: Right. But there are lots of reasons you could be making those calls. So when you have someone who is willing to do anything, you put them at the most difficult, highest level job that you need done in your organization.
It is usually contact with the outside world in all campaigns because you can’t win a race if nobody knows what is going on or who’s running. And it is the one that people least like to do, but is the most valuable.
Then you have to have your other jobs. And if you are doing anything, whether you are organizing ten people to go out and walk a precinct, have everything you need absolutely done ahead of time and organized.
You will find a volunteer who can be that person for you because there are those people out there who have been given the organizational gift. You can turn that over to them.
So for example, when you are getting ready to walk a precinct (and we are going to get into detail how to walk a precinct), you should have bags made with all of the literature in there, the list of the voters, water, sunglasses, sunscreen, and whatever you think you need for that.
It should all be organized so that as people do walk in the door, you are ready for them. They can still have their cup of coffee and donut while you do the training about how to talk, but you have to have scripts and anything that they could possibly need.
John Tsarpalas: Well, let’s talk about making sure you have set hours. People need to know in advance that next Monday night we are going to be here from six to nine.
Kristina Keats: Right. If you set the hours, like if your campaign office is going to be open every day from nine to nine, then it has to be. Because the worst thing you can do if somebody says, “Oh, I’ve got an hour. I’ll go over and volunteer,” and they get there are you are locked.
John Tsarpalas: Right, they won’t be back.
Kristina Keats: And if you say you want volunteers there at 9 a.m., you have to be there at 8:30 or 8 to make sure that you are there, the coffee is made, the donuts are there, and that you are all prepared with the things that are going to need to be done today.
Whenever I ran campaigns, I had a whole shelf unit of jobs that were the mindless ones in case someone wandered in. We always had stuff to do. You can make yard signs. You can collate. I mean, there is just always, always, always stuff to do.
You need to keep it organized. It is harder, but that is why you need to be more organized. “The finished call sheets always go here or the finished walk sheets always go here. If you want to walk a precinct, here’s one that is available.” You have it organized up front so that if someone walks in the door, you can assign them a task.
John Tsarpalas: Right. So the smaller organization, you need to set up something in advance. And then find people who are organizational that can help you build this structure for the other volunteers.
Kristina Keats: It helps if you happen to be a candidate who is very organized. But if you are not, then it is essential that you have a campaign manager. You should have somebody who will play that role. It won’t be full time usually in a local election.
John Tsarpalas: Or even a volunteer who will do it.
Kristina Keats: Right, that’s what I am saying. A volunteer or a couple of volunteers. You could have a team of two or three people who share the responsibility of keeping you data updated, etc.
You do have to be organized, even down to the simple things like you keep all your pens and paper organized. Because the worst thing you can do if someone walks in and they need a pen or a piece of paper is spend twenty minutes hunting for it.
John Tsarpalas: Yeah.
Kristina Keats: You can just kiss that volunteer goodbye.
John Tsarpalas: Okay, so you’ve got jobs set up. You’ve got a place to meet, and the place to meet can be a basement. We used your basement often for school board elections.
Kristina Keats: Right.
John Tsarpalas: How many times did we all get together down there. But you were ready. You were organized. We had certain hours. And we just knew what we were doing.
Kristina Keats: Right.
John Tsarpalas: Where do find the people? How do you get volunteers?
Kristina Keats: You start with your friends; you ask them. Then when you start going out talking to voters, if you find someone who is enthusiastic about the fact that you exist, then you ask them.
John Tsarpalas: Right.
Kristina Keats: When I first ran for state rep, the one thing that was really great about going door to door is that that was how I found people.
John Tsarpalas: I was going to say one of the things I would do is, for instance, we would make phone calls for volunteers. We would have an event we would invite them to; a pizza party or something low cost that they can get into for little money.
Or be invited for free, and then once they met the candidate and felt a little more comfortable, we would say, “Oh, by the way, next Monday night we are meeting at so-and-so’s house. We are going to be making some phone calls and stuffing envelopes.” Give them a little variety in their head of things they can do in case they are afraid of the phones, they will still show up.
Kristina Keats: Right, exactly.
John Tsarpalas: I remember recruiting in the grocery store across the produce someone who had a button on for a candidate. I said, “I am working for this other Republican candidate. Do you know anything about them? Would you like to come to this little event and meet him so you get to know?” And then I worked him into a really good volunteer.
Kristina Keats: Right. One of the things that I recommend if you are in a partisan race, like state rep or state senate, and it is a presidential or even a senatorial year is that you keep yard signs for the candidate in your office.
John Tsarpalas: Yeah, let’s talk about that. That’s important.
Kristina Keats: People will be driving by and they’ll say, “There’s Mark Kirk or a Ted Cruz yard sign. I want one.” They pull over and it brings them into your office. People get passionate about President and Senate. They don’t translate it down to the low level.
Here’s the thing, and this is true especially in a partisan election but still local, low level (state rep, county board, township, whatever); if you do a good job as a low level candidate, you are helping the top.
And one of the things I would always explain to volunteers when they would come in, because we also worked for the local Republican organization and people would want to come in and make calls for George Bush or Mitt Romney or whoever. We would persuade them that if they would make calls for our local state rep candidate, that they would A) have more impact because they could actually get that candidate elected possibly and B) help the top of the ticket by doing it.
Because if we can find people who we can motivate to go to the polls to vote for the low level Republican, when they get there, they are going to go usually up everyone on the ticket. So you always as a group want to work for the lowest level.
But we are kind of talking party politics, but is the same thing. You are helping everybody by helping the bottom of the ticket.
John Tsarpalas: Well, that’s okay because that’s part of the game and people need to understand that. I mean, if it is a local office and it is all independents, it is not thought of as partisan, there are still groups out there that you are helping and helping a bigger cause.
But you are trying to attract people. I think of the things you did very well is people would come in to the office to work for Bush and you would then explain to them it is important to make calls for these lower offices, too. And how that helped the whole entire ticket.
Kristina Keats: Well, we converted every volunteer coming in for Bush to work for, at that time, an open seat for our congressional candidate, Mark Kirk. They didn’t necessarily come in wanting to work for Mark Kirk. But by getting them to work for Mark Kirk, 1) we got Mark Kirk elected by four hundred votes or something like that. The first time he ran, he barely won. And 2) we improved the numbers for George Bush.
John Tsarpalas: It was four thousand.
Kristina Keats: Oh, four thousand.
John Tsarpalas: But still high. Percentage wise it was nothing.
Kristina Keats: Percentage wise it is half of a percent. And Mark Kirk, who later became our U.S. Senator, admitted that his victory was the result of the work that we did at the grassroots. Because there was no one else in the congressional district doing the kind of grassroots that we did.
John Tsarpalas: Right.
Kristina Keats: He carried our township heavily, which was not expected.
John Tsarpalas: Well, it was a Democrat township. He should have lost it.
Kristina Keats: It was a Democrat township. He should have lost and we converted it. Which brings us to the other thing about why you should be hopeful because if you do the work and you do it smart, you can win in areas that Republicans don’t normally win.
I kind of put the limit like if you’ve got a sixty-forty Democrat area, you can still win. If you are seventy-thirty, it is too much to flip. Think about it; sixty-forty you just have to flip ten percent of the voters from ten points. It is a bigger percentage of the Democrat base, but is ten points to flip from Democrat to Republican. You can do that. Ten points is doable. Getting above that is really, really hard.
The other thing I would say even if you have those kind of odds against you, it is still a good thing to run, to work, and to try to persuade because politics is not a short term game. This is where it is different from the sports analogy. When the football game is over, the game is over.
John Tsarpalas: Right. This is building for the future.
Kristina Keats: This is life. You’ve seen over time how areas will flip from being Democrat to being Republican and vice versa. It is a long-term game.
One of the things where I think Democrats have an advantage is because most of their volunteers come from unions and government employees. They have a vested interest like, ‘If we lose, I may lose my job. If we lose, I won’t get more benefits.” Republicans only vested interest as far as I can see for the most part is good government.
John Tsarpalas: And lower taxes.
Kristina Keats: Lower taxes, economic growth, equal playing field for everybody. That sometimes is harder to sustain because what did I ever get personally by working in campaigns? Nothing.
John Tsarpalas: Right, right.
Kristina Keats: Nothing, except the satisfaction of knowing that I helped our country and our community.
John Tsarpalas: Well, we did what was right. We are trying to make a better world by doing this podcast.
Kristina Keats: Right. But I didn’t get a job. I didn’t get a pension. I didn’t get more union contributions. So it does mean that we have a steeper hill to climb, I think.
John Tsarpalas: Absolutely.
Kristina Keats: It is a lot easier to say, “Hey, if you work on this campaign, I’ll get you a job making $100,000 a year.” Whoa! Versus, “Hey, if you work on this campaign, you get the satisfaction of getting me elected.”
John Tsarpalas: Right, although patronage is illegal, but is exists.
Kristina Keats: But the reality is that every job, in the state of Illinois at least, is tied to it.
John Tsarpalas: Let’s go back to volunteers.
Kristina Keats: Sorry.
John Tsarpalas: So we are making some phone calls to invite people to a pizza party and get them involved. We are talking to people door to door. We are spotting people. We are on the lookout for volunteers.
Kristina Keats: Right.
John Tsarpalas: We are asking friends and other volunteers to bring friends. We are always trying to grow our volunteer base.
Kristina Keats: Right. You never have enough volunteers.
John Tsarpalas: You’ve got set hours and you are going to show up at this place on a regular basis. People are going to come.
Kristina Keats: Right. But remember, anything a volunteer is willing to do, pretty much, you want them to do. If they say, “I can’t come into the office, but I’ll send emails on your behalf.” Now that’s great, but good management says make sure you have a way of knowing that the emails got sent.
John Tsarpalas: Right.
Kristina Keats: And here’s how, just as a recommendation. You say, “That’s just great. Can we send you something to send out to your list? And then when you send it, make sure you copy me. And also, would you be willing to share your email list with us so that we could possibly…”
They say, “Well, no, I don’t want to do that. But I’ll send emails out.” “Well then make sure you send me a copy so that I know the email went out. Because what if they call the office and say, ‘I just got this email’ and we didn’t send it.” That’s how you explain it and it is true.
As a campaign, if someone says they’ll send emails, you need to know when they sent it and what they said. Anybody who does anything for you is representing the candidate. I’m sure you’ve seen news stories about how supposedly the worker went and did something illegal or whatever. Sometimes it does happen where the candidate doesn’t know.
But that’s why you explain to somebody, “We just need to see what you are going to say before you send it out. Would you mind just sending me a copy for approval?” What if this person is a little nuts and they start saying nutty things and saying, “Vote for Suzy Smith.”
You don’t want that out there because unfortunately we live in a world where it becomes you said it and you did it. Unless of course you work for the IRS. Then you didn’t do anything!
John Tsarpalas: Yeah, right. It would disappear anyway so it wouldn’t matter.
Kristina Keats: Right. You want to know what they are doing. And if they know that you are going to get a copy of it, then they will do it if they said they would do it. But a lot of times if they say, “Oh, I’ll send emails for you,” and you don’t have a follow up. This is giving you an idea of how organized you have to be. You have to know that Joe Blow is going to send emails.
John Tsarpalas: Right. And phone systems have tracking things. We’ll get into that when we talk about phone systems.
Kristina Keats: Right, and computers.
John Tsarpalas: And computers. Something else though I wanted to bring up was have some snacks. Have drinks.
Kristina Keats: Oh, always.
John Tsarpalas: Make it comfortable for them. Make sure you have all of those kinds of things. And then every now and then pop for some pizza or something if it is around a meal time.
Kristina Keats: Right. And if you can raise funds, then you should institute a student intern program. We are going to go into that in a lot of detail. We are not going to tell you how to do that now, but we will be doing a whole podcast on how to have a student intern program.
The funds don’t have to be that much. You could raise $2,000 for your student intern program. And it’s a fabulous way to get volunteers that you can just so much done. I’ve run a lot of very, very successful intern programs.
It is wonderful working with the kids. It is good for them. They are getting to learn about politics. They are learning huge skills. We won’t go into what we do and how we train them; that will be a podcast on its own.
But just tuck it in the back of your mind that if you are going to need to have a lot of volunteers, and when you go up against the inside group you will need volunteers… But it also depends. If there are only 1,200 people who vote in your local election, as a candidate you should be able to contact every one of those people.
John Tsarpalas: Right.
Kristina Keats: But if you have more, you are going to need a lot more help.
John Tsarpalas: Did you have success with contests and ways to motivate volunteers?
Kristina Keats: Oh, yeah! Again, when we get to our intern program, we’ll talk about the contests. We had contests that we unbelievable motivators. They can be fun. We can talk about how you create excitement in doing that.
John Tsarpalas: Yeah, I mean little things like just ringing a bell when you get someone who is going to vote yes.
Kristina Keats: It sounds stupid, but those are things that work. When you have volunteers calling, you want to always have a goal. You say, “Let’s see if we can connect with two hundred voters tonight.” You’ve got eight people. Everybody is like, “I’ve got one! I’ve got one!” And you meet your goal.
Make sure your goal is always something achievable. If you only have four people calling and they are only going to be there for two hours, then it would be reasonable to have a goal of fifty or whatever.
John Tsarpalas: Right.
Kristina Keats: Here’s another thing that happens inevitably when you are having volunteers make phone calls: they will be calling for an hour and they’ve only talked to eight people. They’ll come out and say, “I only talked to eight people.” This goes back to they don’t want to waste their time.
You have to explain to them how good talking to eight people in an hour is, how fabulous that is. They don’t believe you, but you say, “Look, you talked to eight people, but five people talked to eight people. So in one hour, we connected with forty people and we now know how those people are going to vote. So it is going to save us for those forty people $8 per person in the campaign because we won’t have to mail to them. We know how they are going. So it is so valuable what you are doing.”
John Tsarpalas: Or you know what to mail to them because it is a particular issue. Or you know not to mail to them because, “Oh, I hate that guy.”
Kristina Keats: Or you got their email address, which is so valuable. You got a yard sign up. And we’ll talk about that when we get to the phoning program and how important in local elections yard signs rule. People get frustrated when they are only contacting eight people at a time, but that’s why you have to keep encouraging.
John Tsarpalas: Not only encouraging, but you have to keep teaching them what the bigger picture and vision is and how they are a part of it. And how bean by bean you are filling the sack and they are helping do that and they are helping the victory.
Kristina Keats: Right.
John Tsarpalas: So you’ve got volunteers recruited. We’ve got them organized. We’ve got them motivated. Lastly, I think we just need to thank them.
Kristina Keats: Oh, that is so important. And you don’t just thank them once. This was not hard because it was coming from my heart. You say, “Thank you. We couldn’t do it without you.” Because who doesn’t want to hear that? “Thank you. You are the best. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
And then if they came in once, you as the candidate or the person who is organizing for you say as they are leaving, “Thank you so much. Could you come again? Could you please come again? You did such a fabulous job!”
And it doesn’t matter how good they were. There are volunteers who are like unbelievable. I had one female intern working for me in the olden days when we actually dialed with our fingers. If she got a live voice, she got the people to talk to her because she sounded like a Disney character. “Hi, my name is Claire.” And she was so fabulous. She was just one of those outgoing people.
Well, then you will have people who aren’t as good, but they’ll get four or they’ll get three. It doesn’t matter. No matter what they did, it was fabulous. It was fabulous. And you tell them that.
And then you beg them, and I mean beg. I don’t mean, “Oh, do you think you could come back?” No! “Would you please, please? Oh, you did such a good job. Could you come back for just like one more time? One more time.”
Then you get them hooked because that’s when once they come there, this is their friends, their group, their family. And they cared enough at some point to get involved so you know they care about their school, their village, the road they are trying to put right through the middle of town. They care and now they’ve met other people who share that so it becomes something that they enjoy. Then that’s just wonderful.
So just don’t forget to thank them and beg.
John Tsarpalas: And have something at the end of your campaign, a little gathering or social event. Invite them all. Thank them all. If you’ve got room at your fundraising events, give them free seats. Get them in there to fill you up.
Kristina Keats: Right.
John Tsarpalas: But thank them. Give them perks. Let them know just how important they are to you.
Kristina Keats: And here’ another thing; if you listen to our podcast on data, how to write a script, and how to message, you will know as you are going through the campaign how well you are doing. Are you at forty percent or are you at sixty percent?
Then as the volunteers are changing your numbers, we would have eight people in calling and at some point we would stop everybody to tell them where we stood in the campaign and where we were going. You will know.
It’s not a poll. It is more accurate than any poll ever because you have actually talked to voters, you’ve counted noses, and you know where you are.
John Tsarpalas: Well, thank you. I think we’ve given everybody some great food for how to find volunteers, get them organized, and get them going. So go out there and get started and get your volunteers going and build it.
And remember, you are building something not only for this campaign or for this moment or that issue, but for the future. You can build an organization that can be transferred and used for other things and help really grow and change your area to an area that is pro-freedom, pro-limited government.
You don’t need a lot of money to win a campaign if you can get enough volunteers to help you. There’s nothing more valuable and precious in a campaign than a volunteer’s time. Yes, money is important, but money can be found. Volunteers have to be motivated.
A good volunteer is precious; remember that. And actively find them, recruit them, and support them for supporting you. I hope you enjoyed today’s podcast. Please pass on this podcast to your friends. They can subscribe at iTunes or Stitcher.
If you would, do us a favor and leave us a review in iTunes of the podcast. You can write to me if you’ve got any questions at john@commonwealthy.com. We’d like to answer your questions. Feel free to get a hold of myself or Tina. We always have show notes and transcripts on the website at commonwealthy.com.
Kristina Keats: You have to explain to them how good talking to eight people in an hour is, how fabulous that is. They don’t believe you, but you say, “Look, you talked to eight people, but five people talked to eight people. So in one hour, we connected with forty people and we now know how those people are going to vote. So it is going to save us for those forty people $8 per person in the campaign because we won’t have to mail to them. We know how they are going. So it is so valuable what you are doing.”
John Tsarpalas: Or you know what to mail to them because it is a particular issue. Or you know not to mail to them because, “Oh, I hate that guy.”
Kristina Keats: Or you got their email address, which is so valuable. You got a yard sign up. And we’ll talk about that when we get to the phoning program and how important in local elections yard signs rule. People get frustrated when they are only contacting eight people at a time, but that’s why you have to keep encouraging.
John Tsarpalas: Not only encouraging, but you have to keep teaching them what the bigger picture and vision is and how they are a part of it.
